How to Save the Net: Keep It Open

The premise of openness—that information and data should be freely exchangeable—is at risk. The Heads Of State

For all of its history, the Internet has enjoyed the fruits of an openness principle: the idea that anyone can reach any site online and that information and data should be freely exchangeable. Applications such as YouTube and Skype have been introduced without the need to seek permission of any Internet service provider or government. Nearly 3 billion users enjoy myriad mobile apps and other Internet-based services thanks to the open standards, common interfaces, and rich connectivity that permissionless innovation has delivered.

Today, that premise of openness is at risk—because it threatens the very concept of sovereign national borders that was established in 1648 by the Treaty of Westphalia. In response, more governments are prohibiting access to certain kinds of content, leading to national and regional legislation that may splinter the Internet and interfere with end-to-end connectivity. The Snowden assertions have led countries like Germany and Brazil to propose that all information about their citizens must be confined to physical equipment within their borders. Others, like Iran, want to build isolated “national internets.” China already monitors and controls what information is accessible to its citizens.

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Another risk factor for the Internet is the potential for international political and trade disputes to affect connectivity and freedom of speech. For example, new top-level domain names like .vin and .wine have led to major complaints by France, Spain, and Portugal over who may properly register second-level domain names such as champagne. If Internet governance policy gets mixed up with trade policy, one might see attempts to exchange Internet openness for some adjustment in a tariff barrier or other political accommodation. Such disputes come and go, but if they produce uncertainty about connectivity, they could erode motivation for investing in Internet businesses and infrastructure.

We have a unique opportunity to redesign the Internet's governance by enshrining the openness principle and the concept that all stakeholders should participate in policy development. The US has offered to transfer its present oversight responsibilities to a private-sector, nonprofit, multi-stakeholder organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which was originally established in 1998 for precisely this purpose. I strongly support this proposal. There is no guarantee that such an approach will be accepted by other nations, but the value of an open, fully connected, and accessible Internet should not and must not be underestimated. Societies of the 21st century everywhere on the planet deserve nothing less.

Vinton G. Cerf is the vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google.

This article is part of our “Save the Net” series, featuring bold solutions to the biggest problems facing the Internet today.